Zur Entstehung der Freilassung mit Bürgerrechtserwerb in Rom

Chantraine, Heinrich; Temporini, Hildegard; Haase, Wolfgang

doi:10.1515/9783110836417-004

Cited by 18 publications

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“…The origins of the Roman practice of enfranchising slaves when they were freed has not yet been fully explained. 27 It cannot be isolated from Rome's willingness to share citizen-rights first with other Latin communities, and later with entirely different peoples who had proved their loyalty to Rome. That the Roman attitude was peculiar was recognized in antiquity.…”

Section: Slavery As a Social I N S T I T U T I O Nmentioning

confidence: 99%

III. Slavery as a Social Institution

1987

New Surveys in the Classics

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Whatever our view of the compatibility of Marx’s theories with Weber’s, ancient slavery can be better understood if it is approached primarily as a social category rather than as an economic class. It is the slave’s total rightlessness against his master which makes slavery a ‘peculiar institution’ compared with other forms of dependence. The slave was someone who had lost, or never had, any rights to share in society, and therefore to have access to food, clothing, and the other necessities of physical survival. Typically this was because a slave had been on the defeated side in a war. Roman jurists derived the word servus from servatus. The victors could have killed him: he had no moral claims on them to allow him the means to survive. But the victors had chosen to let him live. Consequently the enslaved captive ‘belonged’ to the individual who had refrained from killing him, or to his community, which generally sold him off to an individual. The fact that he was alive at all was something that the slave owed to his captor, and the fact that he was subsequently kept alive was something he owed to the master who deigned to maintain him as a member of his household. The emotions he was expected to feel towards that master were loyalty and gratitude. Any children the slave might have would inherit this dependence: they would only be alive at all because the head of the household chose to bring them up, feed, clothe, house, and train them, rather than let them die (of course he had a similar right to let his own newborn children live or die).

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Section: Slavery As a Social I N S T I T U T I O Nmentioning

confidence: 99%